It can be appreciated that fabricated expanded polystyrene and expanded polypropylene foam products have been in use for years. Typical fabricated foam products for packaging are comprised of foam peanuts, formed cardboard from recycled pulp, injected form fitted foam, and the like. Typical fabricated foam products for building materials are stackable foam concrete molds, structural insulated panels (SIP's), foam insulation panels, and the like.
Conventional fabricated foam products have an impact on landfills. Discarded foam materials will stay in today's sealed landfills indefinitely with no decrease in structural integrity. Of greater impact than their longevity is the size and bulk of foam products when dumped into the standard landfill. Foam cannot be further compacted and thereby takes up large amount of space relative to its weight.
Conventional fabricated foam products have a single, targeted end use, for example as a protective packaging material, while any second life of the material is an afterthought. As a result, the product has limited use and the costs associated with any recycling efforts are high. There is little financial incentive to recycle conventional fabricated foam products. Additionally, there is little or no social or psychological incentive to recycle. Any foam product is perceived as a single use product, resulting in the production of foam products in separate non-interacting fields of use.
While ease of handling on the building job site and the natural insulating properties of foam make it a desirable building material, its bulk causes the cost of shipping it to be high.
The bulkiness of foam packaging materials also makes their handling, storage, and processing a time consuming, costly procedure. Conventional foam packing materials do not nest together easily. As a result, it is inconvenient to ship them from the foam fabricator to the product packager, to store them until needed for packaging products, and to count them for inventory purposes.
While these foam products may be suitable for the particular purpose for which they are designed, they are not suitable for allowing the manufacture and use of uniform building components that have a pre-use life as packaging materials.
In these respects, the uniform interlocking packing material/building material system according to the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in so doing provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of allowing the manufacture and use of uniform building components that have a pre-use life as packaging materials.